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12/8/15

Happy December everyone, after many hundreds of hours of work and several detours along the way, the new work is finally finished.

The largest piece I have made this year, it is the second where, as part of the design strategy, I intentionally tried to emphasize the custom bolts that hold the work together.

I typically go to great lengths to hide the hardware on nearly all of my works, but given the size and nature of this piece, I felt that hardware elements were useful to give a sense of scale, even if limited to the context of the form itself. In a very simplistic way, they are a visual reference that speaks to a number of design traditions.

The drawing for this one is huge (63" wide by 31" tall).

It is all but impossible to view properly on a small computer screen (see detail above) click any image to see it bigger, also a larger version can be seen on the website.

I debated the color up until the very last minute, then changed my mind completely and went with the blue, it was definitely the right choice.

The finished work stands 24" tall, 13" wide and 8" deep at the base.

One last detail to show off the edge elements.

Just for fun, I made an exploded view drawing as well. Again, click it to see it bigger.

On the technical side, this is the largest "interrupted cut" turning operation I had every attempted. All of the drilling and milling details were completed on the slabs that would become the main body first, before any turning took place.

Once all of the milling and drilling was done, the two large slabs that compose the body of the work were bolted to a custom machined arbor for turning. I had to get out my large 12" 4 jaw chuck to hold it securely enough and dial everything in.

The entire setup weighed nearly 200 pounds and there was only .05" of clearance over the cross slide on my lathe for the initial rough turn.

This set up felt like a whole lot of whirling death, so I showed it a proportional amount of respect, stood off to the side to keep my distance, and took my time when undertaking this job.

Once it was roughed to a lighter, more manageable size, i was then able to transfer it to my CNC lathe where the final profile was machined.

The slabs, once they came off the lathe, still had a lot of clean up and de-burring work that needed to be done by hand. As you can see, there is an extra set in the back. My next piece is a sister sculpture to this one and so will involve using that shape in a different way.

A partial assembly shot, the two halves on my couch before being bolted together.

Thanks for reading once again, with any luck, I will have one more work to share before the year is out.